Recently, Gmail announced a new way of displaying email that presumably cleans up your inbox and makes you more organized — you can read more about it in Mark Wilson’s review. After using it on both the desktop and my phone, I’ve got to say they’ve done a good job. However, one thing they have not implemented yet is a priority inbox for close family and friends. While the Primary inbox does a nice job of filtering out automatic emails from social networks, shopping sites, and more, there is no way to differentiate work from personal email.

That’s where Dextr comes in. The app bills itself as a new mail experience that brings you closer to the people you love. Dextr’s goal is clear: to make it easier for you to communicate with the people you care about the most.

I recently started a journal to keep track of my thoughts and life events. It’s been too long since I’ve used pen and paper to write, so I decided to do it in a more modern way. As an Android app enthusiast, I scoured the Play Store for the most appealing note-taking app. I soon found out there were only a few apps that met my standards, and Flava won me over almost instantly. In addition to having a new approach to note-taking, it’s the ideal journal app that blends nicely with the phone’s Holo interface. It’s not just a digital version of the old fashioned notebook, it’s that and so much more.

Ever since, it’s been quite the conversation starter, with people asking me what it is and what it does and how it works. Well, using a heart-rate monitor and pedometer, the Up works hand-in-hand with your Android phone, syncing data and giving you some nice personal analytics through its aptly named Jawbone Jawbone Up Android app.

It was late at night a few years ago when a package came through marked with a familiar carrier. I had placed an order a few days before for my first Android phone; having absorbed all the hype for several months, I’d decided upon a humble Sanyo Zio on the Cricket service. Coming clocked at a whopping 600MHz, the Zio packed Android 2.1 (Eclair for those who remember) and 256MB of RAM. As my first smartphone experience, it was heaven.